Month: May 2016

070516 Accentuating your child’s natural abilities

070516 Accentuating your child’s natural abilities

Not every child will be a sports super star or even a National champion. Deep down parents most realize this but still, hope springs eternal for our children. Having said this now is the time to help the young trainee make logical choices in how they train.

Some children show potential to run distances while others seem better suited to sprints or feats of strength. One is clearly aerobic whereas the other leans more toward the anaerobic type of training. Only a limited number of children have the genetic make up to excel in all activities.

Spending lots of time urging a child to run long distances when they are better suited to becoming strong and powerful will cause frustrations for both parties. In fact, pushing in this direction can actually weaken the potential of the child to get strong and powerful.

Assuming desire is at the same level for both of them, in the long run, they will never reach the same levels as the one who has the genetic makeup to run long distances. This has nothing to do with their desire but instead to the fact their body is not built to run long distances. There are too many fast twitch fibers compared to the runners’ slow twitch fiber make up.

A child that is naturally anaerobic will be at a distinct disadvantage to the one who is naturally aerobic in makeup when it comes to aerobic activities.

An answer to the dilemma lays in accentuating the positive and eliminating the negatives. Work on those parts of the skills, movements and physical conditioning qualities that are behind in the learning curve. Keep in mind that constant negative harping on the lagging parts will become a sore spot for the child. It won’t take long before they’ll be less inclined to continue with their training.

Helping a child to maintain their motivation to work out means emphasizing their natural abilities; the ones they excel in and which make them happy at the same time. After all, every one of us wants to be good at something and participation in physical activity is no different.

A child who enjoys exercising will more than likely remain engaged in vigorous physical activities for the rest of their lives.

020516 The benefits of exercise are the same as when using drugs…in some cases

The benefits of exercise are the same as when using drugs…in some cases

Researchers examined and then reported in the British medical Journal the findings of 305 different studies of past clinical trials involving approximately 339,000 people. Each of these studies measured the effects that exercise or drugs had on four common health conditions:

  • Heart disease
  • Stroke
  • Heart failure
  • High normal blood sugar prediabetes

They found the effects of exercise were just as great on three out of the four health conditions as medication interventions.

The primary findings indicated that the benefit of exercise, when compared to medication for people with clogged heart arteries, was about as robust as medication. For those people with prediabetes, drugs and exercise fared nearly the same each having a similar impact on the condition. They found that an exercise-based therapy program had more of an impact on the person than medication did during the recovery period after the stroke.

One health condition found in the studies where exercise was not as effective as medical intervention was in those with a weak heart (heart failure). In this instance, diuretics, more commonly referred to as water pills were more effective than exercise.

For all practical purposes, medication and exercise are rarely a one or the other choice because in reality each one can be useful in managing these diseases depending on the circumstances of each situation. The importance of this research emphasizes the value of incorporating regular exercise, along with drugs, in the treatment of these common chronic conditions.